Chapter Seventeen
For a time it seemed that Tom and Samantha could do no wrong, and that nothing could touch their special happiness. With the wicked inventiveness of the ordinary-seeming schoolteacher and the deft management of their partner Jerry, the website got more visitors, gathered more paying members, and brought in greater and greater amounts of money. The extra income was not earthshaking, but it was indeed noticeable, both in the incidentals to which the couple occasionally treated themselves—a fancy dinner on the town, or some nice new outfits for Samantha, or a pleasant addition for Tom’s gun safe—and also in the sums which every month they religiously deposited into their savings account and into their various investments.
Every Friday night between the crimson-draped walls
